I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method for forwarding calls directed to a wireless telephone device.
II. Description of the Related Art
Today the average individual has a home land-line telephone device, office telephone device and wireless telephone device. In addition, one or more of these telephone devices usually have some type of automated answering system, e.g. voice mail, answering machine, etc. When an incoming caller wishes to contact an individual the large number of telephone devices associated with the individual can often make the task difficult. There exists the possibility of calling several different telephone devices and leaving respective messages at each, without ever reaching the intended individual. In addition to the annoyance of not reaching the intended individual at several different telephone devices, there also may be a charge to the called or calling party associated with each left message.
To help alleviate this problem, the called individual can use the well known call forwarding feature, found in most land-line and wireless systems, to forward all of their calls to a telephone device where they will be located and/or to a telephone device which has the least associated operational cost. For example, an individual may choose to forward his wireless calls to a land-line telephone device, rather than a wireless telephone device, whenever possible. However, this requires that a user consistently enable and disable the call forwarding feature for one or more different telephone devices to which a call should be forwarded. This task can be burdensome. For example, to enable call forwarding one usually must enter a call forwarding code, i.e. “*71”, followed by the ten digit telephone number to which the calls are to be forwarded. There is a need for a more efficient system and method for an individual to manage and route their incoming wireless telephone calls in a cost effective way.